Friday 2010-03-05 Screenshots/Video and Discussion Thread

[Bobb4]

When you are in your cockpit with wide field of view or normal field of view and you press SHFT+F1 (the keys used to centre the 109 or 190 sight artificially)your view is zoomed in a bit as the sight is centred.
This has not much to do with gunsight view. The moment you un-centre the gunsight the FOW is returned to normal.
Do some tests and you will see that using SHIFT+F1 significantly reduces your FOV and thus your overall SA.
What I am hoping to achieve with a simple head movement is to be able to strafe ground targets or air targets without losing some SA by default because the FOV has been decreased.
I do not use trackir, I use my left hand on the mouse so other solutions will not work for me. It's basically an immersion thing for me. when you press SHFT+F1 you feel constrained, and are reminded you are flying a sim, a simple slight head movement to the right without any zoom will help keep the immersion alive.
As I have said no biggy, just a suggestion. I hope everyone now understands what i am refering to.
My appologies, the key I was refering to is shift + F1 and not Ctrl + F1

[MikkOwl]

Originally Posted by Bobb4

When you are in your cockpit with wide field of view or normal field of view and you press CTRL+F1 (the keys used to centre the 109 or 190 sight artificially)your view is zoomed in a bit as the sight is centred.
This has not much to do with gunsight view. The moment you un-centre the gunsight the FOW is returned to normal.
Do some tests and you will see that using CTRL+F1 significantly reduces your FOV and thus your overall SA.

Just to make sure I was not crazy, I did go and check, and I used the devicelink interface to make IL-2 display the exact FOV being used. I tried both modes, any fov, etc. The results are:

They are the exact same in both modes. The current FOV setting is carried over between the modes. So switching at 'normal' fov between them, it will still be normal, until one changes to another FOV at some point.

The only thing that happens is that the view is recentered, and the Z axis (the head's position, forward/backward wise) is set more forward in gunsight mode. This must be what you believe is the FOV switching. It does not zoom in, just moves closer, so to speak. An optical illusion. It can cause view limitations of course, if the canopy pillar bars obscure the view.

[Flanker35M]

S!

How about 6DOF + if using snap views you can save head positions. This is used in Aces High online WW2 combat sim. Simple and works.

[Oleg Maddox]

Originally Posted by Flanker35M

S!

How about 6DOF + if using snap views you can save head positions. This is used in Aces High online WW2 combat sim. Simple and works.

maybe.

[MikkOwl]

Agree that being able to choose the 'center' for the head would be a good feature. In any plane without center gunsights, I keep having problems with the centering. It can be ok to be offset, but often is too high or low when I try to lean into gunsight.

[Bobb4]

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

This must be what you believe is the FOV switching. It does not zoom in, just moves closer, so to speak. An optical illusion. It can cause view limitations of course, if the canopy pillar bars obscure the view.

I will not argue whether it is an optical illusion or not but when I lose a good 10% or more of my viewing area I will say I have lost a great deal of SA.
If your theory holds true then looking backwards I should have an increased FOV. Test that out and you will then discover be it a head movement forward as you claim or an optical illusion your FOV is restricted in any direction you choose to look from normal view...
Put your self in a bomber pilot seat and you will inderstand.
Use Shift + F1 and you will suddenly find your view restricted no matter which direction you look.

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by Bobb4

I will not argue whether it is an optical illusion or not but when I lose a good 10% or more of my viewing area I will say I have lost a great deal of SA.
If your theory holds true then looking backwards I should have an increased FOV. Test that out and you will then discover be it a head movement forward as you claim or an optical illusion your FOV is restricted in any direction you choose to look from normal view...
Put your self in a bomber pilot seat and you will inderstand.
Use Shift + F1 and you will suddenly find your view restricted no matter which direction you look.

Sure, but that's how it is in reality as well, If you're looking down the sights of a gun your view IS limited compared to just loosely look in the direction your gun is roughly pointing.

[MikkOwl]

Originally Posted by Bobb4

I will not argue whether it is an optical illusion or not but when I lose a good 10% or more of my viewing area I will say I have lost a great deal of SA.
If your theory holds true then looking backwards I should have an increased FOV. Test that out and you will then discover be it a head movement forward as you claim or an optical illusion your FOV is restricted in any direction you choose to look from normal view...
Put your self in a bomber pilot seat and you will inderstand.
Use Shift + F1 and you will suddenly find your view restricted no matter which direction you look.

I loaded up IL-2 again and carefully went through the following aircraft:

B-24
B-17
H-111
Fw-190A8
Bf-109E4
Ju-88A4
AC-20

The heavy and medium bombers (except Ju-88 and AC-20) did not have any kind of gunsight and in most of them, Shift-F1 moved the view between pilot and co-pilot seats.

Looking forwards as well as backwards, it is as expected: it moves the head into a new position (usually forward the most in every plane. Movement to the side occured in some of them (in He-111, it moved forward-left even). In the Fw-190, the view also moved upwards a bit.

Looking backwards in all the aircraft while switching views - both over left shoulder, and right shoulder, one can see better and more in gunsight mode as the seat/armor plate is further away. In the 190 one can see the elevators on the right side even which are otherwise hidden. In the Ju-88 one can see much more everywhere, mainly because curtains are present behind the pilot up to about as far as his seat support so any movement forward gives better views.

There are a few planes where the non gunsight mode is extremely much higher (in a cheaty, unrealistic amount). The Me-262 is maybe the most extreme. The Me-210 and 410 (if you have them) are other examples. Using gunsight in those planes very much gimps the view in any direction, but on the other hand, that is still the most realistic view for those planes (one does not stand in a cockpit in reality.. ).

In the aircraft where the gunsight is offset to the right, looking back over left shoulder did not give much (if any) different view because the head was offset to the right, cancelling out the forward movement.

You can try this for yourself. Try also to look straight down, or straight sideways while pressing Shift-F1 to see how far forward and back the move is.

Never the less, the move forward does bring the canopy pillars closer, and makes them larger, and this gimps the view to an area to the front in some planes (Fw 190 a very big offender. Same thing happens in spitfires if one leans forward). I know I never liked flying in gunsight view because of the pillars etc being closer, for pretty much the same reasons you have now. After switching to head tracking it was no longer an issue but I still remember...

[Bobb4]

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

I loaded up IL-2 again and carefully went through the following aircraft:

B-24
B-17
H-111
Fw-190A8
Bf-109E4
Ju-88A4
AC-20

The heavy and medium bombers (except Ju-88 and AC-20) did not have any kind of gunsight and in most of them, Shift-F1 moved the view between pilot and co-pilot seats.

Looking forwards as well as backwards, it is as expected: it moves the head into a new position (usually forward the most in every plane. Movement to the side occured in some of them (in He-111, it moved forward-left even). In the Fw-190, the view also moved upwards a bit.

Looking backwards in all the aircraft while switching views - both over left shoulder, and right shoulder, one can see better and more in gunsight mode as the seat/armor plate is further away. In the 190 one can see the elevators on the right side even which are otherwise hidden. In the Ju-88 one can see much more everywhere, mainly because curtains are present behind the pilot up to about as far as his seat support so any movement forward gives better views.

There are a few planes where the non gunsight mode is extremely much higher (in a cheaty, unrealistic amount). The Me-262 is maybe the most extreme. The Me-210 and 410 (if you have them) are other examples. Using gunsight in those planes very much gimps the view in any direction, but on the other hand, that is still the most realistic view for those planes (one does not stand in a cockpit in reality.. ).

In the aircraft where the gunsight is offset to the right, looking back over left shoulder did not give much (if any) different view because the head was offset to the right, cancelling out the forward movement.

You can try this for yourself. Try also to look straight down, or straight sideways while pressing Shift-F1 to see how far forward and back the move is.

Never the less, the move forward does bring the canopy pillars closer, and makes them larger, and this gimps the view to an area to the front in some planes (Fw 190 a very big offender. Same thing happens in spitfires if one leans forward). I know I never liked flying in gunsight view because of the pillars etc being closer, for pretty much the same reasons you have now. After switching to head tracking it was no longer an issue but I still remember...

Sorry I was posting from work. When i checked in game just now, you are right the head has moved forward, lol
This still is not what i hope the SOW solution will be. I trust in the SOW team to find the best solution.

[Skoshi Tiger]

In Il2 I have my gun sight and normal views mapped to one of the hats on my Joystick. When I'm in a situation where I need to use the gun sight i'm fairly well concentrating on the target any way so I not really paying attention to much else so the situational awareness isn't much of an issue for me.

If there's tracers wizzing passed my cockpit then it's my team mates shoulder shooting or an extremely bad shot! Either way it's time to go back to normal view and assess the situation!